Senior Technical Product Owner

Speridian Technologies is recruiting for a Senior Technical Product Owner for our State of California Client, the Department of Healthcare Services, Behavioral Health. This person will be part of a long-term, fully budgeted, state-of-the-art, extremely vast technical modernization project working with a variety of cross-functional teams and stakeholders.

This is a remote role; however, there will be meetings in the Sacramento area several times a year.  Candidates are expected to work business hours, Monday-Friday, Pacific Time Zone.

Join DHCS’s Behavioral Health Transformation: Where Purpose Meets Innovation
Location: Remote
Department: Department of Healthcare Services (DHCS), Behavioral Health Transformation (BHT)
Commitment: Full-Time Consultant (W2 employee of Speridian or 1099/IC for Speridian) 

Why DHCS?
At DHCS we are leading a transformative journey in Behavioral Health, reshaping systems and services to ensure better outcomes for communities across California. Our Behavioral Health transformation initiative is more than a project—it’s a movement to make California a leader in accessible, high-quality health services. We’re setting the stage for a new era of government services built on agile methodologies, cutting-edge technology, continuous improvement, and a relentless commitment to serving the public good.
At DHCS, we’re looking for innovators who are passionate about purposeful work and excited by the opportunity to drive lasting change through innovative solutions.

Our core values are what make us successful and define the impact we have on the DHCS program and California’s citizens. 

• Partnership:  Respect Other, Practice Empathy, Earn Trust
• Ownership:   Take Accountability, Show Reliability, Act with Integrity
• Grit:  Bring Passion, Exhibit Perseverance, Demonstrate Resilience
• Value:  Drive Outcomes, Maximize Impact, Keep Improving

Description
The Senior Technical Product Owner drives delivery of DHCS’s modern technical platforms supporting behavioral health (BH) and related program initiatives. This role owns the backlog for engineering teams and ensures alignment between business, policy, and technical objectives. The PO partners with Product Managers, engineers, architects, analysts, and policy experts to deliver secure, scalable, and user-focused solutions that meet operational, compliance, and stakeholder needs.
This role is responsible for converting objectives, key results, product strategy, and roadmaps into well-groomed, prioritized backlogs that deliver measurable value, enhance platform capabilities, and ensure compliance with state and federal requirements.
Responsibilities

• Backlog Ownership & Prioritization

• Own, refine, and maintain the product backlog for technical platform and application delivery teams.
• Translate policy, program, and stakeholder requirements into actionable epics, features, and user stories with clear acceptance criteria.

• Strategic Alignment & Delivery

• Collaborate with Product Managers to define and maintain product objectives and key results (OKRs).
• Align backlog priorities with strategic goals, compliance mandates, and agency-wide platform initiatives.

Partner with Product & Delivery Managers on budget oversight and financial accountability—including tool procurement, monitoring burn rate relative to sprint velocity, and ensuring delivery cadence aligns with contractual or funding constraints.

• Platform & Solution Development

• Support delivery of core technical capabilities including secure data exchange services, identity and access management, consent management, integration layers, and API-driven interoperability solutions.
• Ensure platforms are resilient, scalable, and capable of supporting future enhancements.
• Oversee delivery of self-service tools and monitoring capabilities for internal and external stakeholders.

Stakeholder & Policy Integration

• Work with policy teams, analysts, and external partners (e.g., counties, MCPs, QHIOs) to gather requirements and validate outputs.
• Ensure solutions align with behavioral health policy, reporting standards, and privacy regulations (HIPAA, 42 CFR Part 2).
• Metrics & Continuous Improvement
• Define, track, and report on success metrics (e.g., platform stability, adoption, performance, security compliance).
• Drive backlog items that improve usability, reliability, and operational efficiency.
• Facilitate discovery, prototyping, and testing to validate solutions before full deployment.

• Collaboration & Leadership

• Lead agile ceremonies with cross-functional teams (engineering, architecture, UX, policy).
• Champion the voice of platform users, ensuring solutions meet the needs of DHCS analysts, leadership, and county partners.
• Provide thought leadership on best practices in platform management, interoperability, and identity/consent solutions.
  

Qualifications

• Experience

• 7 years in product ownership or related technical leadership roles.
• Proven track record managing complex backlogs in an Agile environment.
• Demonstrated ability to translate policy and compliance requirements into technical deliverables.
• Experience supporting products or platforms in cloud-based environments (AWS, Azure), including infrastructure and deployment workflows.
• Background in healthcare, government, or other compliance-driven industries strongly preferred.

• Skills

• Backlog and roadmap management for technical products and/or platforms.
• Strong understanding of platform architecture concepts (APIs, microservices, integration frameworks).
• Knowledge of identity and access management (IAM), authentication standards (OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect), and consent management best practices.
• Ability to define, track, and communicate product OKRs and metrics.
• Exceptional communication and storytelling to bridge technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Strategic and systems-level thinking with ability to balance short-term delivery and long-term planning.

• Experience owning the full operational lifecycle of their product area—including backlog management, incident response, and risk mitigation.

Additional Preferred Skills

• Familiarity with interoperability standards (FHIR, HL7) and secure data exchange patterns.
• Experience implementing or integrating identity, authentication, and consent management platforms.
• Understanding of data privacy and security requirements in healthcare and government contexts.
  

Speridian is an Equal Opportunity Employer